YoungArts Grants $30,000 to Five Mid‑Career Artists
Fellows also gain access to residency space, mentorship and public presentation opportunities, continuing YoungArts’ unwavering commitment to lifelong support for its artist community
MIAMI (August 26, 2025) – YoungArts announced today the 2025-2026 YoungArts Fellows, the institution’s most significant award given to five mid-career artists across disciplines from around the country. Each fellow will receive $30,000 in unrestricted funding and experiences that advance the artist’s goals, including residencies, mentorship, public works-in-progress events, informal community gatherings and technical demonstrations.
The 2025-2026 YoungArts Fellows are:
- Salimatu Amabebe, 2025-2026 Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow and 2010 YoungArts winner in Photography;
- Angela Han, 2025-2026 Visual Arts Fellow and 2011 YoungArts winner in Jazz;
- Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes, 2025-2026 Performing Arts Fellow and 2013 YoungArts winner in Voice;
- Preethi Ramaprasad, 2025-2026 Performing Arts Fellow and 2006 YoungArts winner in Dance; and
- Christell Victoria Roach, 2025-2026 Literary Arts Fellow and 2015 YoungArts winner in Writing.
“It is an honor to support these exceptional artists who first joined the YoungArts community more than a decade ago,” said Clive Chang, President and CEO of YoungArts. “YoungArts is in the unique position to be able to offer ongoing opportunities, such as these fellowships, to artists across all disciplines and throughout their careers, allowing them to hone their practices and contribute to an ever-more vibrant and sustainable arts ecosystem.”
The YoungArts Fellowship is open to artists ages 25 and older within YoungArts’ network of more than 23,000 award winners. Annually awarded through a competitive process, each program application is reviewed by an anonymous panel of distinguished artists and staff.
This fellowship is a cornerstone of YoungArts’ lifelong commitment to its award winners and mission of nurturing talent for generations to come by providing essential support long after their initial recognition. With $30,000 in unrestricted grants, mentorship and community engagement, the program empowers artists to innovate and evolve their creative practices at a critical juncture in their careers. This long-term support enables individual growth and allows artists to thrive and expand their impact, ultimately strengthening the broader artistic community by cultivating a more vibrant, interconnected cultural ecosystem.
Recent fellows include Hanna Ali, a 2016 YoungArts winner in Visual Arts; Tyné Angela Freeman, a 2012 and 2013 YoungArts winner in Voice; Amanda Krische, a 2012 YoungArts winner in Dance and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts; Samora la Perdida, a 2015 YoungArts winner in Theater and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts; and joseph webb, a 1996 YoungArts winner in Dance and U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.
About the 2025-2026 YoungArts Fellows
Salimatu Amabebe
Interdisciplinary Arts Fellow
Salimatu Amabebe (he/they) (2010 YoungArts Winner in Photography) is a trans, Nigerian-American chef and interdisciplinary artist working in food, film, photography, sculpture and installation. His work centers community activism, African diasporic performance traditions and Black queer/trans liberation. Amabebe is the founder/director of Black Feast, a culinary event celebrating Black artists and writers through food. Amabebe received his bachelor’s degree in film production from Bard College in 2010 and earned his Master of Fine Arts in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley in 2024. Amabebe’s work has recently been presented at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Yerba Buena Center for Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, SOMArts, The David Ireland House and CounterPulse. Amabebe is a recipient of The Museum of the African Diaspora’s 2023-2024 Emerging Artists Program Award, a 2023 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, the 2022 Black Immersive Creators Grant and the 2021 Eater New Guard Award. His work has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times and Eater. Amabebe’s work and recipes can be found in A24’s cookbook, Horror Caviar, and Klancy Miller’s recent cookbook, For the Culture.
Angela Han
Visual Arts Fellow
Angela Han (2011 YoungArts Winner in Jazz) is a Chinese-American multidisciplinary creator (artist, musician, educator, researcher, storyteller and curator) who builds speculative worlds through art, music and storytelling. Han combines folklore, herstory, musicology and her own experience to create narratives that embody her hopes for the future. These stories are then brought to life through intricate, multilayered paintings featuring rich, lyrical compositions. Han has work exhibited at Arc Studios & Gallery, International Hotel Manilatown Center, Sanchez Art Center, SOMArts and Voss Gallery, and is the recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission Artists Grant (2021) and Arts Impact Endowment Grant (2025) as well as California Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship (2023). She currently serves as President of the Board of Directors at the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA).
Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes
Performing Arts Fellow
Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes (2013 YoungArts Winner in Voice) is a flutist, vocalist, composer and songwriter described by The Guardian as the “most exciting and creatively assured jazz flutist to have emerged in years.” Pinderhughes’s music is deeply rooted in the African Diasporic lineage, culture and musical traditions and its vast array of rhythms, melody and harmony; but her unique voice and flute playing style bring a unique musicality, harmony, rhythm and culture to create a sound all her own. She has performed in venues and festivals throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, North Sea Jazz Festival, Coachella Music Festival and The Kennedy Center. In addition to her performing career, Pinderhughes works with composer Laura Karpman in her film scoring studio, Art Farm West, and was featured on her scores for The Marvels, HBO’s Duster and Academy Award-nominated American Fiction.
Preethi Ramaprasad
Performing Arts Fellow
Preethi Ramaprasad (2006 YoungArts Winner in Dance) is a dancer, curator, musician and researcher. Her journey teaching and performing Bharatanatyam has led to artistic community-building endeavors across India, Europe and the United States. She co-runs When Eyes Speak Choreography Festival, The Varnam Salon and Performing Voices of Bhakti which aim to create safe spaces to share South Asian expression in the diaspora. Ramaprasad has a doctorate in Critical Dance Studies from UC Riverside where her dissertation focused on representation and the performance of myth among transnational Bharatanatyam practitioners.
Christell Victoria Roach
Literary Arts Fellow
Christell Victoria Roach (2015 YoungArts Winner in Writing) is an Emmy-nominated poet and performer from Miami, Florida. As a descendant of Miami’s Black Pioneers, she writes about Blackness, the Blues and many different types of love. She was a 2022-2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and is now pursuing her PhD in literature and creative writing at Florida State University. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami after graduating from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and African American Studies. Roach writes poetry that embraces and expands the Southern Gothic to the tropics. Her recent work has been published by The Atlantic, the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine, Obsidian Literary Journal, Scalawag Magazine, The Miami Rail, and SWIMM Magazine, and she is currently working on her first book of poetry.
About YoungArts
Established in 1981 by Lin and Ted Arison, YoungArts identifies exceptional young artists, amplifies their potential, and invests in their lifelong creative freedom. YoungArts provides space, funding, mentorship, professional development and community throughout artists’ careers. Entrance into this prestigious organization starts with a highly competitive application for talented artists ages 15–18, or grades 10–12, in the United States that is judged by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through a rigorous blind adjudication process.
For more information, visit youngarts.org, Instagram or Facebook.
